Two of the products I created for my
"It's Raining Doll Parties Products Gallery" included
three jigsaw puzzles with graphics that I had designed of the Hawk Family. One of the puzzles had the Hawk family children graphics on hearts, one had their square fabric images on it, and one had the Hawk Family graphics with the words "It's Raining Doll Parties" on it.
The jigsaw puzzles come in two sizes: 8" by 10" puzzle in gift box and 10" by 14" puzzle with 252 pieces. The pieces are made of sturdy cardboard and mounted on chipboard and are printed in vivid colors with easy wipe clean surfaces. I decided to try two of the 10" by 14" size puzzles and ordered two of them.
When they arrived I was anxious to try them as I LOVE puzzles of all sorts and have since I was a child. Give me a puzzle to put together, a crossword puzzle to solve, Rubiks cube, three dimensional puzzle of the Empire State Building, etc. and I will work on it until I've finished it or solved it. I spent hours one weekend when I was a teenager solving the Rubiks cube. I worked on it and worked on it and worked on it until I solved it. Sounds a little obsessive compulsive doesn't it?
When I was a child I also adored spending hours on end putting jigsaw puzzles together. My mother did too and we spent many hours over the years sitting side by side doing our jigsaw puzzles. I was thrilled when the Monet impressionist paintings jigsaw puzzles first came out as they were harder to do. I was so in love with puzzles I even glued and mounted some of them on cardboard to hang on the walls in my room. I can't remember what the puzzles were - probably images of movie stars like Robert Goulet or Doris Day or the early rock bands like Hermans Hermits, Dave Clark Five, etc. Who knows. I'm definitely dating myself here.
In any event I've never outgrown my LOVE of puzzles. Kind of like my LOVE of dolls -something else I've never outgrown a love for. I could go on and on but need to get back to the story.
So, I was anxious to try my new puzzles but decided to wait until this weekend as I knew my grandson 'Noodles" was visiting this weekend and thought it would be fun to put them together with him. Noodles and I always have a wonderful time and a lot of fun when he visits. We do a lot of shopping and eating, shopping and eating, shopping and eating, and shopping with more eating. Come on now --- with all that shopping one does get hungry. At least that's what I tell myself after stopping for cookies.
When we got home from all that shopping and eating I asked Noodles if he wanted to help me put the puzzles together as I needed to make sure the products would work for my 'It's Raining Doll Parties." Yeah, sure Nana - make sure the products work??? Fess up - you just want to do the puzzles.
He said, "sure" but warned me that he had never done a jigsaw puzzle before which surprised me at first. I thought for sure he would finish his before I even got my out of the box. Then, when I thought about it I realized he's from the Millennial generation where their scrolling phones are attached to their fingers shortly after birth and they have X-Boxes or Wii's in the corner of their cribs. The Millennial generation would't be familiar with such an old school dinosaur toy as a jigsaw puzzle. So, I shouldn't have been surprised.
Since he had never done a jigsaw puzzle before I explained to him that I liked to build my puzzles from the outside in. Start with the straight pieces and built to the inside. Everyone has their own method - that's the one I've always used. So we set to sorting the puzzle pieces and finding the edges.
To my surprise the puzzles were a little harder than I had thought. We didn't have enough time to finish ours before we went out to eat. Come one now with all that puzzle work I got hungry.....
We ended up finishing our puzzles the following morning. I actually finished mine before Noodles did. YIPPEE for Nana. He didn't know it but I had secretly given him the harder of the two. Bad Nana! Bad Nana!
Hey, come on now...... He can run circles around me when it comes to our phones. I won't even mention the video games he's been able to trounce me on since he was born. At two he was on the last level of the Mario video game before I had even figured out how to use the joystick. So, I cheated a little this weekend. In all fairness Nana has to win at something - don't she?
Fun with puzzles and Noodles this weekend. I LOVED it.
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Linda Walsh Originals- "Doll Patterns for Grown-up Girls!"
Linda Walsh Originals E-Patterns - "Instant Download E-Patterns for Grown-up Girls!"
Linda Walsh Originals Dolls - "Handmade Dolls & Crafts for Grown-up Girls!"
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